world series part two
there's gonna be a lot parts to this
Part two of my story about finding out about my biological family. I’m realizing this will drop in four or maybe even five parts over the course of the next 6 weeks as the story is still on going and I’m still figuring out how much I want to share. I wanted to drop this sooner, but due to the devastating fires in LA I had to put it off for a few weeks but now I’m ready to resume and thank you to everyone who has read or reached out and supported me in any way during this, it means a lot. Also from now on these are going to be behind a paywall because they are a little heavier than my usual stuff but at some point I might make them free again.
A part of me became slightly unrecognizable the moment I got off the phone with my cousin. I can no longer look at my face anymore and think of myself. I look at my face and think of the six other people out there right now that carry some of the features of my face. But my face has only ever been my face. My features have been unique to me because I have never had to share them with anyone else. In my world, I made my nose and my eyes and my ears and my mouth and no one else. No one has ever been able to identify my face in another face. It has only been mine and now, suddenly, it’s ours. I already miss my face, what was singular has turned plural in the course of a Facetime call. My face is something I got to have as an adopted person, because we don’t get a lot when it comes to our identities. We don’t get to be our DNA, our culture. We don’t get to be our parents because there is always someone who wants to asterisk you, even if that person is yourself sometimes. We don’t get to see where we get it from, we are only made to wonder what could have been. And now my face- my gap tooth, my nose, my big eyes and little upper lip- are they still mine? I see my face now and it looks different. I’m a stranger in my own mirror wondering when the rest of me is going to show up.
The next few weeks after the phone call with my cousin turned into some of the most chaotically good weeks of my life. These were weeks filled with my friends and I frantically laying claim to any open spot at any bar to watch each game that led the Dodgers to the World Series. These were weeks where my wardrobe consisted solely of Dodger gear and the energy in LA was a constant high. These were also weeks spent reeling with the new information of where my life could have went. Looking at each bar we finally “found a spot!” wondering if my life with four siblings would have brought me to any of those spots, tables, bar stools, standing room onlys with the people who surrounded me. And each win we watched at those spots inched me closer to another huge decision I had been sitting on for awhile: if the Dodgers go to the World Series, what do I do about my trip to New York to see one of my best friends while she works an incredible job that has temporarily taken her away from her life in LA but the trip also coincides with the Dodgers in the World Series?
Also the week of the World Series would coincide with another huge event: a planned first phone call with my birth mother. A incredibly pivotal week for both me and the 40 man roster of the Los Angeles Dodgers.
In the first few days following the phone call I did what any person would do- maniacally try to find any trace of my siblings or birth parents on the internet. Despite my best efforts I could not find a single thing. I searched every iteration of the last name I heard my cousin say was theirs but nothing ever pulled up. It was like they were ghosts, existing only in the phone call with my cousin. They were still just four names to me coupled with a few facts about where they lived, the jobs they’ve had. Any time I thought I was close to finding them a part of my flinched, wondering was this my last moment with my face. I braced myself as my heart rate ticked higher thinking that maybe this name on page 7 of a Google search was my brother’s (it wasn’t). But it was what everyone wanted, even demanded- the people needed photographic evidence. “Just ask your cousin to send a picture of them!” but I was secretly hesitant because I wanted a little more time even though I also didn’t want to lose anymore time. I joked with friends that if I finally got their picture should I do a siblings reveal party- cutting into a cake with a champagne glass revealing each face that carried my face and hoping that someday that joke would land with them. Do my siblings like memes? My mind can now only think in relation to them.
The phone call was planned for the end of the month, which is fine because October is for baseball, not for birth moms. Selfishly I couldn’t help to wonder- why doesn’t she want to talk to me now? My cousin told me my birth mom was moving and traveling which is why the call was put on hold, understandable. It makes sense in a sensible world. But was I living in a sensible world? What is sensible when you find out you’re a family secret? So why would she want to wait any longer? I’m right here! Hello! But if I am hers then this is sensible. I put off big, scary things all the time. If anything, I’m the one that was in possession of her number for over a year and I couldn’t bring myself to save it under her name. So for now I will let baseball fill in the gaps where sensibility should have been thrown out the window.
And that it did- the Dodgers would beat the Mets to secure their spot in the World Series so the end of the month phone call was now in the shadows of a historic New York Yankees verses the Los Angeles Dodgers World Series. The timing of this phone call and the Dodgers going to the World Series felt too on the nose, the parts of me ready to experience the highest highs holding hands with the parts of me about to experience feelings I have yet to discover. It was like I was simultaneously living in my own postseason. Clinching new titles each week with new information about myself all leading to the pivotal moment of finally maybe, talking to my birth mother. The questions will be answered, the pieces of me that I thought were lost forever can now be recovered.
I would watch the first half of Game 1 of the World Series at a bar in Echo Park then fly down the 2 to get to my nanny job to watch the second half of the game. I have forced the family I nanny for to become Dodger fans and I let the kids stay up to watch the very historic ending to Game 1. An injured Freddie Freeman would step up to the plate in extra innings, Dodgers down by a run and a true storybook ending in the palm of his hands. A few months prior to this, one of Freddie’s kids was diagnosed with Guillain-Barré syndrome and would be paralyzed from the waist down. Freddie left to be with his family and we watched over the next weeks as he would very emotionally return to baseball as his kid grew stronger and stronger.
It all just fit too perfect for the story and as I sat there with the two kids I nanny way past their bedtime, I watched the game unfold on a vpn (which just means it was streaming 30 seconds behind). I thought to myself how cool a grand slam would be but in what world would that actually happen. That was until my phone blew up. I instantly knew. The girl I nanny had fallen asleep so in my most whisper of a celebration, I started yelling we won. The 7yo would look over at me and then the TV which still had Freddie up to bat and wonder what magic I held to see the future.
At that point because of the World Series and not being able to find a hint of anyone online I had pretty much tabled all thoughts about my birth family. What could have been a dark time of waiting was bulldozed by my favorite team doing my favorite thing (winning). And they were doing it in historic fashion. Los Angeles verse New York? The closest I’ve felt to God in years.
I would watch Game 3 of the World Series at a packed bar in my neighborhood that I got to three hours early to secure the last available table. There is no greater feeling than watching a high stakes game surrounded by friends and strangers. I think I sat down for 3 minutes the whole night with a new pitcher of beer brought to the table at 15 minute intervals. I decided to go through with my trip to New York and was excited because the friend I was visiting was also a huge Dodgers fan. The Dodgers would win Game 3, going up 3-0 in the best of 7 series. Right before the game someone told me that tickets were “reasonable” (meaning they no longer carried a comma in their price tag) because Yankees fans were selling their tickets as they didn’t want to see a Dodgers sweep in person. Suddenly I had a job at the bar- eyeballing every third party ticket site to find tickets. I texted my friend asking if she wanted to go to the World Series and if so did she have a number. Hammered I ended up buying tickets to the World Series a little outside our agreed upon number but it will forever be worth every extra dollar I spent that night.
I somehow made my 6am flight the next morning decked in head to toe Dodgers gear. A third of my flight also in Dodgers gear, all of us wide awake on adrenaline. Even the gate attendant sported a Dodgers jersey as she scanned our boarding passes. It felt like we were being shipped off to NYC, the Dodger delegation coming through to support our boys in New York.
I spent my entire flight texting various baseball related group chats about my excitement of going to my first World Series game. I figured out how to most efficiently get from JFK to the place I was staying in Bed-Stuy then hopping on the right train to the Bronx. In the middle of my flight an email would alert at the top of my screen. It was from my cousin. “Hey! So your birth mom was wondering if you were free Friday for a phone call.” The email instantly sobering the emotions of going to the World Series and reminding me that my face was no longer just my face anymore. I had all these other faces and in particular the face that created me was ready to update their Google cal with an important date. I would stare at the screen then suddenly snap out of it as my Dodger group text would send some fun meme related to the series.
I would land at JFK and perfectly execute my journey to Yankee Stadium. It was one of the best nights of my life even though we ended up losing. I met so many Dodger fans outside of the stadium and we all became a fun little family that night. I’ll never forget my friend and I walking into that stadium together and seeing the field dressed for the World Series. Smiling and smirking as we walked the corridors of Yankee Stadium while receiving many boo’s and a handful of high fives. Yet the thoughts were still there- I wonder if my birth family liked baseball? Are they watching the game tonight without a clue their older sister was in attendance? And by the way, how was I an “oldest” sister? Also was my birth father a baseball fan? He lives in New York- what if he’s at the game? But then a Yankee fan would try to steal a ball from Mookie’s hand during the game and all those thoughts would get to the back of the line again.
The next day I would hurry four hours early to my favorite Dodger bar in the East Village and secure a seat at the bar where I would order a margarita and finally open the email from my cousin. In the rush and emotions of getting to the Bronx the day before I had no time to reply to her email so as a crowd formed early at the bar, I typed out that I would need to postpone the call as my trip became overwhelmingly busy, because you see my favorite team was in the World Series. She understood.
The Dodgers won the World Series that night. I got sprayed by champagne and hugged one million Dodgers fans and a Yankee fan that night. I had no voice the next day and it will always be fun to look back at the night I got to dance on the enemy’s grave. I was bummed I couldn’t lose my voice in LA but something about being in New York as a Dodgers fan and watching them win, when the other path of my life was to begin as a resident in Queens, felt aptly appropriate. I spent the rest of the week in NYC with my friend hanging out and talking through what this impending phone call could be. We decided I should treat it as just a phone call with a lady. But she was a lady with my face, a face I still hadn’t seen yet. And there I was once again searching to find my face again, losing it to six other faces and my features slipping out of frame knowing they also live somewhere else.
I flew back to Los Angeles and the phone call was put off for a few more weeks due to work/Thanksgiving/life. But then it happened and I’m on the other side of it now and my next newsletter will have no baseball and all birth mother phone call.